The Dream
by Toasterman
Summary: "He stands in the black forest during the war. His war. The one he returns to most often, the one that he never searches for but always finds. Blood and fuel run out, churning in the snow, a slurry that covers the world. Light is trapped in the forest top. Heavy Nazi tanks bogged down in the snow." A Fourth of July one-shot prose-poem about Cap's bizarre life.


The Dream

He stands in the black forest during the war. His war. The one he returns to most often, the one that he never searches for but always finds. GIs and krauts laying face-down in the slush. Blood and fuel run out, churning in the snow, a slurry that covers the world. Light is trapped in the forest top. Heavy Nazi tanks bogged down in the snow. They're pushing again, despite their losses, throwing nothing but kids and old men into the fray. He reaches down, pries an M1 from the grip of a dead man. He knows it's loaded by the weight in his grip. The enemies are nearer, their helmets bobbing against the white.

"Cap, they're coming again."

"I know, Buck. We need to get out of here and—" He turns, but Bucky isn't there and the forest and snow are gone and he's somewhere else, another time, another war.

Space flies by outside the window. Ships cut the black, weapons from beyond imagination lighting the void and ending lives in little puffs of swallowed decompression and glittering debris. It's beyond him, a war he can't countenance. He keeps himself grounded, doing what he does best. Even in space, a fist can do a lot of work. The shield careens off Kree helmets and his boots find Skrull chins. Thor fills the hangar with lightning, roasting aliens.

The Kree-Skrull War. How has it been since then?

He looks across this strange battlefield and finds his target. The big one. It's moving away from the fight, and he has the cube in his grasp.

He taps his helmet mic. "Stark, I have eyes on Super Skrull. Move to my position and we can—"

The ship is gone, the Avengers are gone, and he feels neon dust in the lines of his palms as he crawls up a mountain beneath a riotous sky. His uniform is held together by rope and field repairs. His face is covered in scruff, his hair is long, tousled by an ion wind he remembers too well.

Dimension Z.

Ahead, higher up the slope, he can already see the static wurm's nesting place. Two days of hunting, tracking this thing across these switchback mountains. It's a predator, hunting the natives. It's also good game. He needs to get close. A miss here and he won't get another chance for weeks. More people will die.

How long was he here? Ten years? How long ago was it he got out?

He moves close to it, reaching back, hand on his shield. One shot. One clear hit, behind its neck plating. Knock it out and finish it close with the knife in your belt. The wurm glows, casting the side of the mountain in a blue-white wash. He pulls the shield and throws it—

—and sees it collide with an AIM trooper. It rebounds, slides back into his hand, like it was made to fit there. He never stops moving, kicking, leaping, punching. A trooper swings at him and he grabs his wrist, twists, snaps the kid's forearm and hurls him aside. His strength is much more than it should be, and he realizes he is encased in armor. His serum is breaking down, and he's wearing this suit to keep him alive.

When was this? Was it ten years ago? Twenty? Five? Jack Flag and Diamondback are here, but he doesn't remember when he last saw them. The nineties? That can't be right. He was thawed in '08.

"Skull!" he shouts, moving forward, faster, rushing for the containment tube at the end of the chamber. Can't let the Skull have the cube. Can't let this happen. Have to—

He wakes up on a table. "BUCKY!" he shouts, throwing off the colorful grasps of the costumed heroes around him. He was frozen in the ice in '45, but now he's here in a future undreamed of, a man out of time in… in… the sixties? Eighties? When is this?

How long was he in the ice?

How long has he been out of it?

"Steve," says Peggy, and he sees her as she has been, as she once was, as she never has been. A forty-year old woman he met when he first thawed out. A sixty-year old woman he put in charge of Avengers HQ in the eighties. A woman whose funeral he attended in 2011. Why did she age, lose her mind, die, when he was still here? Why was he worth it and she wasn't?

"Peg," he says, but she's gone, too, and suddenly he's in the ice again, staring, eyes open, as the world and time slides away from him, where and when he awakes the ultimate call of beings beyond him, the temporal, authorial gods which judge when he should be, how he should act, who he should be. Hail Hydra. Avengers Assemble. I can do this all day. Loyal to nothing except the

dream.

((()))

He wakes up again, newly, most recently. He must have jolted awake, because Shar heard him. She sits up.

"You alright, Steve?"

"Yeah," he says. The dream fades. He rubs his eyes to get rid of what doesn't. "What time is it?"

"Five-thirty." Her hand is on his shoulder. "Sun will be up in a few."

He nods, stands up, stretches. "I think I'll go for a run," he says.

"Another one?" she says, rolling over.

He smiles. "There's always another run," he says.


End file.
